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The Debt Of The National Debt

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The National Debt consists of the total debt accrued by local, state and federal. Public debt is essentially the federal debt, thus compiling the staggering number that already exists. The debt deficit to me is astonishing. Currently, the total public debt in the United States, as of December 16, 2015, is $18,788,138,221,346.49. This includes $13,600,726,418,253.26 debt held by the public and $5,187,411,803,093.23 by intergovernmental holdings (usgovermentdebt, 2015). High GPD is not anything new to the United States. The all-time high was 121.70 percent ($18827323.00) in 1946 and a record low of 31.70 ($253400.00) percent in 1974 (United States Government Debt to GDP, 2015). The way we are spending, and the debt we are accruing, it would …show more content…

The third category, spending and interest, accounts for the littlest of the three categories. In lament terms, Social security, military and healthcare account for the majority of our budget. This is no surprise because Social Security and healthcare are both mandatory spending (services our programs we rely on) and the military is discretionary spending (services or programs we rely on), and as stated above, this accounts for the majority of our spending, thus our debt. We rely on these services on a daily basis, and the baby boomers continue to age, the cost spends on social security and Medicare will continue to grow. The same goes for healthcare. As healthcare continues to be costly, the amount spent on Medicaid and insurance providers will continue to grow as well. After reading and understanding where the money is spent, when I took the Concord Coalition’s Federal Budget Challenge, I had a better realization of how little things can improve the deficit in big ways. After reviewing the site, and taking the challenge, I learned some small things that can have large outcomes. One thing I choses in the revenue category was to reform Medicare and provide seniors a fixed amount of financial support to purchase private health insurance. To me, I agree the idea of cutting healthcare would increase competition among health plans and lower costs of health insurance (Federal Budget challenge, 2015). I personally think that private healthcare, rather than

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